


Before

by acsullivan



Series: Same Old Gravel, Same Old Sickness [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Flashbacks, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, fix it ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 22:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acsullivan/pseuds/acsullivan
Summary: “I’m gonna be okay, Buck,” he announced, weak and barely there, a chirp, a whistle. Nothing more. Bucky had heard it before. He believed it every time.





	Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newsbypostcard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/gifts).



> Similar to my previous work "Jeremiah 29:11," here is a bit more thought-out version of how I would've concluded Steve (and Bucky's) arc in Endgame given a "picture-perfect" world. 
> 
> This was also incredibly inspired by @newsbypostcard, who truly is my favorite writer I've come across in a long, long time. Your Endgame ending healed a few holes in my heart and I've essentially accepted it as my version of what happened. Thank you for all your beautiful words!
> 
> 2nd part to come shortly.

**_Present Day (2023)_ **

**_Somewhere on Earth_ **

**_Morning_ **

****

It all sounded like a whistle, really, the chirp of a bird so close to Bucky’s ear it messed up the innerworkings. He was reminded in that instant of the air raids of 1943, was elated to experience a recollection that profound, that deep, but then he was walking on soil and earth again, feeling terrain crunch under his boots like he’d never stopped marching. He was in the thick of it. Bombs he’d never seen before were dropping at both sides of his head and erupting. War was the same, it seemed, except now the fight sought _him_ out.

            He didn’t have to go looking for this certain hell. Bumping shoulders with a halfway friend and squinting through the fire and flames of battle, Bucky didn’t have to look for much at all. He knew who to shoot, with whom to rally, instincts from lifetimes passed ringing back to life and pretending they’d never left him, like they’d never crossed that line to be manipulated and frauded and ruined.

            Bucky didn’t ask where the fight was. Besides, his voice wouldn’t work and he couldn’t hear a damn thing above the thunderclaps of alien creatures sparking to life before his eyes, teeth barred, searching for a throat to devour. The world had brought the fight to him, dropped it like a prize at his feet, and all he’d ever been trained to do was wear it with pride, adorn himself with its gory carcass and let out a war cry. Same old, same old. Nothing left to be felt.

            And Wilson had been the one to contact _Him_ , a little ingenious idea he conjured upon stepping from their alternate reality through a sizzling golden circle within time and space and all those elements that had forever conspired against James Buchanan Barnes. And He was easy enough to locate; Wilson need only scan the bloodied horizon for the helmeted head of a warrior, a hero, a sticking point amidst all hell and high water, bearing an effigy of freedom on his arm, a defender.

            Bucky, however, didn’t need to search. He felt Steve in his bones, even when they’d fallen into ashes and blew away in the sunny Wakandan air. Bucky’d assumed that’s what happened, based on those last miniscule seconds of consciousness he’d used to utter the only word that had never tasted like acid on his tongue.

            So when Steve turned to see Bucky and Sam emerge back into the one life they’d been lucky enough to share, Bucky felt himself both inflate beyond recognition and topple with a dozen thumps to the stomach, bearing the weight of their endless peril. Does nothing change? Time must really be total bullshit; he read that somewhere, in a fiction book, in a poem, in a letter he wrote Steve huddled in the ditches they dug and pretended to sleep in, in Italy.

            Bucky couldn’t change, no matter the years nor their content. No matter how much he’d been beaten sideways and no matter the lives he’d stripped, no matter how little he remembered all of it and no matter the blood that’d stained his fingernails, he couldn’t change this insurmountable part of himself: he’d been made for Steve. He’d been made for that look Steve imparted to him from across the battlefield, an age or two apart, sure, but still conjoined. Bucky had been molded and sculpted from a malleable nobody over and over again just to feel Steve’s eyes burrow into his face and stay there, as long as he could. As long as he wanted.

            But then a javelin from another galaxy nearly took Steve’s eye clean out of his head and he was flung to the left by a monster Bucky couldn’t even begin to see, never mind comprehend. Bucky shot in his direction, in every area and at every combatant that could’ve gotten a hair closer, until Steve emerged from the rubble as steady and calm as ever. He didn’t glance back because they were fighting a war, he didn’t have room for sentimentality, because Steve Rogers – no, Captain America – was the king of putting on a brave face, chewing the inside of his lip, pretending like he’d never known the cold throes of mortal sickness or fear, and pushing ahead.

            Bucky, having already resigned himself to death three times over, followed blindly. He’d been designed to do a lot of things, sure, but this one, following Steve “into the jaws of death,” as he’d put it so many moons ago, was definitely his favorite. As he shot through martian foreheads and beating hearts, he found a moment to be glad Hydra hadn’t completely taken this functionality from him, though Lord knows they’d tried.

 

**_1941 – Brooklyn, New York_ **

**_December 6, 22:31_ **

A man was whistling somewhere to Bucky’s left. He heard it down the alleyway, could see his lanky reflection in the rain puddles that accumulated between the bricks of the sidewalk. Their notes were off key and twirled in their own little dance, so Bucky picked up his pace and made his own splashes in his own puddles. It was late and cold, and when the rainwater sloshed his feet it bled into his socks, and when he wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve his nostrils burned like the dirty docks, so he hoped his own snot and saliva wouldn’t freeze over.

            It was late, not the latest he’d ever arrived home from a day’s job but certainly further into the night than he appreciated. And there were things to be taken care of back home; the bathroom window wasn’t shutting all the way, there was a leaky pipe in the kitchen, and Steve was as frigid as ice curled into a ball on the sofa. At least, Bucky hoped that’s where he was, for he’d promised to stay there all day until Bucky’s shift came to a close.

            Bucky’d assumed that the cough Steve had been saddled with would be enough to keep him put, the way it gargled like metal shards in his throat whenever he sat up a certain way. And he had that milky glean to his face, one unique to infections with long, drawn-out durations. But, checking the skies again as Bucky turned on slippery heels toward the fire escape, he knew Steve couldn’t be entertained by that familiar sickly silence for long.

            He worked open the kitchen window with hardened fingers, calloused by the winter and all the rope nets he’d sent overboard ships that day. The wood gave a loud creak and finally flung upward, letting in a bluster of wind that traveled faster than Bucky, nestled inside before he could to wedge his shoulders inside. And much to his dread, the aging hardwood was slick in patches with water, icing over quick. He performed something of a tap routine to avoid the dangerous spots, meandering without grace nor abandon to the couch where Steve was supposed to have stayed sleeping and getting better.

            “Jesus Christ…” fell past his lips before he thought better of it, before he realized his sudden outburst would send Steve, who’d been reduced to a lump of blankets and knobby shoulders a few paces away from the sofa, two feet into the air with fright.

            “What the – Bucky?” he exclaimed, neck turning so fast Bucky worried he’d have to jam it back into place. “I… _God_ , what time is it – “

            “You told me you’d stay layin’ down.” He tried to convey a mixture of remorse and aggravation through his steps, through the way he readjusted the cushions and searched for matches to relight the two candles on the floor. But there was a trail of stubby pencils and eraser shavings leading from the sofa to Steve’s remote location at the foot of the window that wouldn’t close all the way. Bucky’s throat snapped shut, to attention.

            “Didn’t think the boss would…would keep ya so late…” Steve muttered in between a poorly suppressed cough, sounding no more alleviated than he did fifteen or so hours prior. “And that you were done watchin’ me like a hawk.”

            Bucky realized quickly that he felt warm, warm enough, warmer than Steve ever could or would, despite the subzero temperatures of their living quarters. Probably a result of his nighttime jog or just fear manifesting itself whenever Steve’s lungs rumbling like an old car motor, he stripped off his overcoat.

            “What else I got to do around here?” he managed before squatting next to Steve, giving up the fight sooner than usual. Steve picked up on it, too, the lack of a need to keep defending himself, and blinked a few times before understanding what Bucky was staring at.

            “Oh, just killing time…”

            Bucky couldn’t look away, wouldn’t dare to, worried that the snow outdoors would dampen the pages and ruin the pictures.

            “You’re gonna catch your death, sitting next to the _one_ broken window in the place.”

            The joke was wildly insensitive, stopped Buck dead in his tracks. There was no genuine frustration in his tone; Steve knew as much. He fiddled with the eraser on his pencil before relinquishing completely the stoutly bound notebook he’d been cowered over, ruining an already crooked sense of posture. Bucky made sure to not get his dirtied fingertips on the pages.

            Two separate figures, each likenesses of Bucky inflated to some absurd level of delicacy he just didn’t have. There wasn’t a single clean line about the real Bucky Barnes, but he’d play along and believe it if Steve willed it into pictorial existence like that.

            “Got these the other day, down at Bruce’s…” Steve shoved a crumpled bit of newspaper into Bucky’s lap.

            “That’s why it took you so long to grab groceries? You were doin’ some _light_ _reading_?” Bucky teased, aimlessly, opening up the folds of the printed paper.

            “You keep leaving me with nothin’ to do.”

            They were picture ads for the theatre a few miles west, away from the eastside where the docks weren’t as stinky and where Steve and Bucky wandered when they had something extra burning holes in their pockets, a rare occurrence. “Gone with the Wind” and “Red Dust,” films from different lifetimes, it seemed, were drawn up in loopy lettering. Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Vivien Leigh looked onto a two-dimensional distance that wasn’t there.

            The Buckys Steve had constructed in pencil looked straight out of the movies, dressed in polar-opposite garbs based on the radically different characters, but both wore the same expression: a joyful one, with steepled cheeks and squinted eyes, a cigarette in hand. Not staring into a non-existent distance but gazing right up at their audience. Bucky’s chest grew a little tauter, and when he handed the newspaper ads back to Steve, he could see that the lead seeped into the grooves of his right palm, evidence of a hard day’s work.

            “There were havin’ a double feature, last weekend. I…I haven’t seen ‘Red Dust’ since that time Mom dragged us out to go…”

            His shoulders bobbed with jagged breaths and Bucky threw his coat overtop Steve’s arms. With the motion both decided to pretend like it wasn’t happening, like this wasn’t the eighth night in a row Steve had acted like his own body was rejecting his lungs.

            “Wasn’t that right after she got mad at us for stealin’ from that candy store, down the road…” Bucky watched Steve’s face contort with incredulity, setting him up for a laugh and eagerly waiting for its impact.

            “No, _you_ stole two licorice wands and got away faster than me, so the old shopkeeper thought it was me,” Steve corrected, shoving Bucky away and relinquishing the sketchbook. “Mom chewed _both_ of us out.”

            “She could never stay mad for long.” Bucky folded the newspapers up again, not liking the deadpan stare of Hollywood royalty anymore. “Said we needed outta the house, had a few extra bucks.”

            “Even if she didn’t, she just liked Clark Gable,” Steve whispered, swallowing, rubbing the sides of his face and streaking black and grey down his cheek.

            Steve liked the movies like Sarah Rogers did. Bucky had been keeping a jar of change for the off-chance he found enough money, time, and health between the two of them to walk the four miles or so to catch a picture. He liked the way he could see the film reflect in Steve’s eyes, which never even blinked, for Christ’s sake, as if to shut them would end the tiny reprieve a movie provided him, even for just a second. He’d been too sick to go, last time, despite convincing Bucky of the opposite, and wretched so bad at the start of Frankenstein he’d left the theatre. The shades of embarrassment on his face were next to unbearable.

            “You gotta rest, Stevie.”

            As if on cue, Steve crumpled into Bucky’s shoulder, gazing blankly, knowing he was right but too damn proud and reckless and desperate to say so aloud.

            “When do you gotta go in tomorrow?” he murmured against Bucky’s neck, who quickly realized he needed a shave.

            “I’ll be home before it’s dark.”

The work was good, it paid better than the grave digging and the newspaper delivery combined. It was time-consuming. Bucky still felt he needed to lie about it.

            Steve could sense it, too, and that’s why he stood up without him, used his arm as a pushing-off point, and kept touching his face and shading more pencil down his tinny cheeks. He waddled in a pair of Bucky’s socks to the mattress in the living room’s corner, while Bucky picked up the blanket he’d molted off and forgotten about.

            “There was a dame down at the docks today that reminded me ‘a you, ya know,” Bucky lied again, just wanting to paint some other expression on Steve’s face besides that depleted, saccharine defiance. It grew hard to witness, after a while, so fortunately Bucky earned a harsh upturn of Steve’s brows as he made to lay down and took the blanket.

            “What’d’ja mean by that?”

            “Had a buck-beaked nose. Big watery eyes. Nice sunny blonde hair but needed a good shower.”

            Steve rolled his own watery eyes around in his head. “You said the cold water here will make me ‘catch my death’.”

            It was an exacting joke. Bucky stuffed the blanket in between Steve’s torso and the lumpy sleeping mat roughly, conveying a mood he didn’t actually feel.

            “A nice slice like her has hot water back at her place. For sure. None ‘a these shitty city pipes.”

            Steve turned on his right side to face Bucky. “Maybe you should stop on by then. Feel nice to be warm for a change.”

            Steve did that, literally or figuratively turned over and shot volleys of sincerity and earnest at his conversational partner suddenly made opponent. On a normal day Bucky could stand it, on a good day he could counter it, even, but not that day. Not that night.

            “What, you think I could _leave_?” Bucky slid against the wall and hugged his knees loosely to his chest, staring at the top of Steve’s head until he strained his neck to put their eyes together again. “Who would remember to shut the windows all the way? And keep the stove lit? And make sure you actually went to bed at a halfway decent time?”

            “Buck…”

            “And who would keep up your pencil supply? Hm? Who? You think that ol’ dame would?”

            Steve looked away. “Well, they are getting kinda short.”

            “Damn it all to hell, Rogers,” Bucky laughed, watching Steve bend into himself a little more, hopefully amused, hopefully drowsy with remedial sleep.

            “I’m gonna be okay, Buck,” he announced, weak and barely there, a chirp, a whistle. Nothing more. Bucky had heard it before. He believed it every time.

            “I know.” No more space for humored acerbity. Bucky knew it because he had to. Constants in life were rare, and he’d gone and strung himself to one with perpetually weedy knees and an immune system prepackaged with a dozen and a half gunshot wounds. Bucky’s constant was anemic of body and gargantuan in spirit, a thing to get drunk on, the risk was so high.

            “Go to sleep, Stevie.”

            But Bucky was a keen observant of differences, shifts in the normal, in the depended, cracks in their joint geology. Steve left him without the usual derogatory demand to hit the couch and catch a few hours of slumber himself; he just turned over to face the wall whose trim and paint peeled off in sheets, left debris on the floor so thick Bucky could roll it into a ball between his fingers. Steve was silent. Bucky counted his breaths, listened to the gravel in his throat, waited for blood, and found himself sliding down the wood floor.

            He’d promised Sara Rogers he’d be with Steve. After she’d crumpled in the street, bedridden and benumbed, gone, from tuberculosis in less than ten days, he’d swore that Steve would always fall under his care, his arms, his wings, but it always felt hollow to make such an oath. It didn’t convey the whole of it, hardly even the half of this constant onto which he’d tied his chains and shackles. It wasn’t a one-way transaction. The way he’d borne such angelic, awed witness to those drawings spoke more than his post-mortem promise.

            Bucky’s hand found Steve’s shoulder, a hill amidst the valleys of blankets and sheets. He thumbed the landscape, protecting it, drumming up makeshift heat, and banished the plagues that riddled it every fortnight or so.

            Steve made Bucky feel right, as though he wasn’t bent sideways, incorrect, wasn’t a nobody meandering in an era of depravity. Steve had this absurd way of pretending so intently that Bucky was a monolith of strength and congruency that, sometimes, Bucky thought it just might be true. It couldn’t be, of course, it simply _wasn’t;_ Bucky was selfish and ugly about his time with Steve, allowed him to preach about Bucky’s courage and love him without abandon, a dangerous thing every sane person had discarded in years passed.

            Maybe Bucky was just indulging the hopeless side of himself, the hopeless romantic, the hopeless optimist, the hopeless comedian, satirist, blue collared, thanatophobe, pacifist, when he was with Steve. Steve was his reprieve, his own little movie, someone with whom he’d fashioned a world and would do any damn thing to keep them both within it. He’d been taught that love was fickle and hard to come by, and, in that time of famine and war and absolute collapse, he dug both hands into this treasure he’d found, ready to be torn limb from limb.

            So Bucky cried and watched Steve sleep into the morning of December 7th, 1941, waiting for the same old sickness to claim him, unaware that it would be the war that drove a wedge in his fake little cinematic world, instead.

 

**_Present Day (2023)_ **

**_Somewhere on Earth_ **

**_Evening_ **

****

“B-Buck…”

            Fingers turning red.

            “I’m here, Stevie…not goin’ anywhere…”

            Knuckles going white.

            “I’m…I’m sorry, I didn’t – that wasn’t supposed to…”

            Breath coming in short.

            “Jesus, don’t…don’t apologize. I’m good. I’m fine. I’m…”

            Alive. Against all odds.

            “You…you stop leaving. You gotta stop…”

            Weak in the knees.

            “I’m done. I’m done. I’m here.”

            No mountain air to freeze the lungs. None to break the spine.

            “We’re here, Stevie.”

            Just warmth.

            “We’re staying.”


End file.
